Well, I thought the idea was a good one, showing the processes at work in the personified emotions helping a young girl (Riley) grow up. But Riley was just a puppet, controlled by anything that passed her way. The squabbling among the emotions as to which one was to take control I found tedious...in fact, I found the whole movie tedious. The artwork was subpar in much of the movie, compared to what we've come to expect in animated feature films. Too many cartoon slapstick clichés. In one long sequence, I thought I was watching a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Frankly, I don't understand why people are touched by this movie. There's just nothing there.

I hope everyone is having a good holiday season. Except for Rita, we all celebrate Christmas in our own ways, and my way was to go to the new Star Wars movie. I was glad to see the franchise is back on track again, a fact my son attributes to George Lucas's having no hand whatsoever in the making of this new movie. (He's never forgiven Lucas for the Ewok.) Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a transitional movie, making ready for the next generation. The omens are good.

What killed me was that Mark Hamill got second billing even though he was on the screen for maybe 30 seconds and didn't speak a word. A set-up for him to become Jedi Master to Rey? Who is Daisy Ridley, BTW? She was good, fit right in.

She's one of those British actors who can sound American on demand. There was sadness in the movie too, and loss...inevitable in any changing-of-the-guard story. But there were so many small delights along the way that the movie couldn't help but end upon an upbeat note. I loved the scene where Rey mind-tricked a storm trouper into releasing her from captivity, especially since the actor inside that white suit and helmet was Daniel Craig.

Yeah, that was fun. But with J.J. Abrams directing both the Star Wars and the Star Trek movies now, he's going to have to bend over backwards to avoid the same old same-old. The old Star Trek magic is long dead and we'll just be getting routine adventure stories from now on, but there's a real chance of preserving the special Star Wars flavor, IMO. In a way, I wish it was the other way around.

As is John Boyega, and he actually had to do that in this movie (very well, I thought). He has a decent list of credits for his age (though all unfamiliar to me), but she's done very little up to this point -- mostly half a dozen British TV episodes.